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An anonymous reader writes "As first-person shooters have evolved, they've transitioned from using Nazis as the bad guys to more modern organizations, such as the Taliban. Two recent games, Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Medal of Honor: Warfighter, have both shown the country of Pakistan in a very negative light, and now shopkeepers in the country are beginning to boycott the games. 'Saleem Memon, president of the All Pakistan CD, DVD, Audio Casette Traders and Manufacturers Association, said he had written to members ordering them not to stock the controversial games after receiving dozens of complaints. ... The latest installment of the Medal of Honor series opens with American Navy Seals coming ashore in Karachi docks on a mission to destroy a black market arms shipment. But when their detonation sets off a second, bigger explosion they realize they have stumbled on a much bigger terrorist plot, sparking a global manhunt. A chaotic car chase through the city follows amid warnings that the ISI — Pakistan's intelligence agency — is on the way. Mr. Memon added there was a danger children would be brainwashed into thinking foreign agents were at war inside Karachi, possibly leading them into the arms of militants. "These games show a misleading idea of what is happening in the city. You don't get the CIA all the way through Grand Theft Auto," he said.'"

It's not a ban, it's a boycott. Turns out that people don't like games where the best the can be is set dressing for the glorification of a violent foreign power when that same power back in the real world indiscriminately sends out robots to bomb the next village on a weekly basis.

I can assure you that if a game that showed american soldiers raping children and killing innocent people in Irak for fun were developed, nobody would ever publish or stock it. The download site would get DDOSed constantly too.

Hell, even 100% proven, documented stuff like showing warrantless arrests with no trial in gitmo and torture would be a major no-no.

I remember playing "raid over Moscow" when I was a kid, which was a C64 game where you had to fly a bomber to the Kremlin, kill its guards, and blow it up. I suspect that it wouldn't sell well in the USSR, and that if somebody published the very same game today as "raid over Washington" replacing the Kremlin with the White House then it wouldn't sell well in the USA. People don't enjoy being offended, especially by propaganda, especially when it touches open wounds.

They have an active insurgency in their tribal region as well as a cease-fire in place with India which is currently being violated on both sides, while covertly supporting an insurgency in Afghanistan. Oh, and supporting education for girls will get you shot in the head, even if you are an eleven year old girl!

So Pakistan is a country that supports terrorism you claim.Then if for instance Iran was a major contributor to the ruling regime in Pakistanit would be easy to conclude that Iran is supporting terrorism by supporting Pakistan.

So, since the United States is one of the biggest donor of aid to Pakistanhttp://transition.usaid.gov/pk/about/budget.html [usaid.gov]And that we have lifted the arms embargo and are presently upgrading theirF16 fighters and selling them more F16 fighters, does that count asthe US supporting terrorism, by supporting Pakistan?

This is just a storm in a teacup situation; For one, now one gives a flying fuck, and secondly, pirates CDs for 30 rupees (~30 cents) each man, if one shop doesn't, you don't think there are 100 other shops in the same damn plaza who will provide it?Besides they haven't been able to stop outright *porn*, they will do something like this? Yeah right.

Go back people, noting to see here, no one cares except some bourgeois who like to #TweetLikeABurger . Mr "Association President" just wanted the world to know that (a) He exists; and (b) Vote for me at the next association election!

This isn't even news here, I didn't even know this was an issue (For once, Slashdot provides news on time!). We are more concerned over CNG (no fuel for cars, winter heaters or stoves), or the fact that the investigator who was investigating corruption charges against our PM conveniently committed suicide (The fact that there were signs of torture, or that he had sent SMS to pals regarding him being pressurised to change evidence is obviously unrelated.)

Come on people, we are people of, what, 180 million? Most of whom can't even afford to feed them self, much less buy games. We are Hungry, cold, freezing and Immobile, not to mention without work. We have better thing to worry about, besides, no one can outdo us in cursing our nation, I am sure your games pale in comparison.

I don't think you have to be a jihadist to worry that the U.S.'s policy for combating it is insufficiently cautious about "collateral damage". There is also a realpolitik question of whether it's actually effective: bombing the bad guys may feel good, but from a rational perspective feeling good and killing bad guys is not sufficient, and is counterproductive if you cause so much negative sentiment that you inflame anti-American sentiment among the local population, increasing terrorist groups' ability to recruit new members and find sympathetic people to shelter them. In some cases bombing works, and in other cases it does not work, and I think it's legitimate to ask whether the strategy the U.S. is currently pursuing is actually working, or is intended just to make it look like they're doing something, to please U.S. voters.

Here's a fun game [newsgaming.com] you can play in which you wipe out terrorists by bombing them.

Given that a simple comment from the Dixie Chicks along the line of "We are disappointed that Bush is from Texas" resulted in CD crushings (apparently they don't burn) and radio bans, you are probably right.

Completely incorrect. There is nothing the US has or has not done that causes jihadis to hate you. Same with Israel. It is core to Islamic doctrine to hate and subjugate all non-believers. It is a mistake to think it is for any other reason. The other thing is the Arab and Islamic culture respect strength. If you are willing to compromise it shows weakness which they will push to exploit. The only way to earn respect is through strength and fighting at an intense pace that the jihadis can't match. That is the lesson Israel has learned the hard way. There is no quid-pro-quo with jihadi organizations. You can concede but all you get is 'hudna', a temporary respite while they gather strength preparing for the next attack. If you are weak you will not be offered hudna, jihadis take the weak down without remorse. Look at the slaughter of Lebanon. Your statements are nice in theory but just do not match the historical record or reality. There is no compromise with jihadis. Either you win decisively, or they win and you are extinguished. Winding down your offensive means looks like you are losing to jihadis and it emboldens more recruits. So your uninformed guesses about 'inflaming' the locals is wrong and counter to history (eg. see the Sunni Awakening in Anbar where the strength and moral restraint of US forces gained respect and did more than appeasement ever would).

I think you have a rather ignorant view of what's going on, which doesn't match historical record or reality. Support for jihadists in Muslim countries has waxed and waned for various reasons. It's completely sensible, if you want to have an actually fact-based policy which causes improvements, rather than a blind-faith-based policy which makes you feel like you're playing a cool videogame and killin' dem brown people, to look at which U.S. policies contribute to waxing versus waning. And I don't think the "fire-and-forget" use of drones is mainly aimed at that kind of optimization. Rather, it's aimed at getting people reelected (and this goes for whether it's Bush or Obama trying to get reelected).

In short, I think your fondness for action films, and possibly some kind of weird bigotry, is clouding your judgment, which is true of many of my countrymen, to the detriment of America's safety. But killin' dem Muslims gets American politicians elected, so they'll keep doing it even when it's dumb. Shock 'n' awe, duuuuude! Mission accomplished! It's like a bunch of you fucking frat boys are in charge; I'd rather have some adults.

Completely incorrect. There is nothing the US has or has not done that causes jihadis to hate you. Same with Israel. It is core to Islamic doctrine to hate and subjugate all non-believers.

The same applies to other religions too. Yet most practitioners aren't as focused on hating and subjugating, but rather on their everyday business.
I think you're overestimating the importance of extremists. Most people there are just trying to survive.

It is a mistake to think it is for any other reason. The other thing is the Arab and Islamic culture respect strength.

You're confusing them with Klingons.

The only way to defeat islamic extremists is to cut them off from manpower and supplies and that can be done only with non-combat means.

I mean geez, it's not like helicopters of commandos are landing to storm armed compounds in the middle of cities, to kill the most wanted terrorist ever (who's been 'hiding' there in plain sight for years).

There is nothing the US has or has not done that causes jihadis to hate you

Okay, let's have a thought experiment. Let's say that some unkown force starts to bomb places in the US. They claim they're targetting only "militants" and warmongerers but every now and again they happen to kill the entire family, a few neughbours etc. Are you telling me that this would not cause everyday citizens to become enraged at whoever it was that was doing this? And that the recruitment officials wouldn't use it as a marketing tactic to get young men (and women) to enlist? Because that's essentially what you're doing right now. And your take on this seems to be along the lines of "well, we can't reason with their ideological leaders, so we might just as well not give a fuck about what the general populace thinks of us."

You're missing something important here: jihadists don't appear out of nowhere. These kids don't list "suicide bomber" as their dream job when they grow up. They're recruited - just like american soldiers. The difference is, recruiting is not exactly hard when you can just walk into a neighborhoodthat recently had a drone strike and find the relatives/friends of those who've died on that strike and start talking to them about vengeance.

So it is a legitimate question to ask whether or not the drone strikes are acutally helping or just making the problem bigger. No matter what the media would often want you to believe the world isn't neatly black and white. Believe it or not the way your foreign policy is conducted affects how people all over the globe judge you and if you're seen as the world police who will use whatever means to destroy those who disagree with it with little to no regard for civillian lives... well, let's just say you're not making life any easier for yourselves.

You tried the "The communists hate because they hate us and you can't reason with them so we must destroy them all" -tactic with much greater force in Vietnam and it failed there. And islam played no part in that whatsoever. All you've done now is replaced the Viet Cong with terrorists/jihadists and communism with islam.

The problem is that the middle east is pretty F-ed up politically, and economically.

It's more analogous to if during prohibition the U.S. government had allied with martians to take down Al Capone and the other gangsters by deploying martian tripods to destroy speakeasies.

The U.S. is undertaking the drone strikes with the permission of the local government and usually the drones launch from that very government's military bases. The local government doesn't like these people any more than the U.S. does, and there's a whole illegal international narcotics and weapons trade that is funding these outlaws.

The main problem is that illegal trade is pretty much the local economy and the U.S. doesn't have the guts to just say "fuck it, we're taking over it's our way or the gallows". Neither do we really have the option of simply ignoring these people and letting them wallow in their own mess because of the oil trade and our alliance with Isrial. It's also true that a fair portion of this mess is our fault as it's a result of the shenanigans the U.S. and U.S.S.R. pulled during the cold war.

The goal of the drone strikes is largely to act as a deterrent. The idea is that if the public at large sees the president of the U.S. crossing names off his "to die" list at a fast enough pace, they'll generally try to avoid getting on that list. And drones are the cleanest way to do that (no U.S. casualties and collateral damage is more limited than any other approach that wouldn't cost american lives.)

Bullshit. The jihadis have been art war with every non-Muslim for 1400 years. You are an idiot if you think it is because of something the US did, or the Zionist movement in Palestine. The Muslims hate us and are working to subjugate us and put us in the Islamic social system - and have been doing this for 1400 years. Your argument is complete rubbish (peddled by the political Left because it has common cause with Islam in seeking destruction of existing society).

So it is a legitimate question to ask whether or not the drone strikes are acutally helping or just making the problem bigger. No matter what the media would often want you to believe the world isn't neatly black and white. Believe it or not the way your foreign policy is conducted affects how people all over the globe judge you and if you're seen as the world police who will use whatever means to destroy those who disagree with it with little to no regard for civillian lives... well, let's just say you're not making life any easier for yourselves.

More crap. The drones are a huge issue in Pakistan because the Pakistani ISI *created and support the Taliban* and the drones are so effective at taking the Taliban down. There is also a soveriegnty issue as well, but given the Pakistani ISI are covertly fighting the Free World this is dismissed. The line about drone strikes making more enemies is rubbish. The majority of Afghans want to be rid of the Taliban. If the people in the madrassas are angry who cares? they hate us anyway. Your average ignorant citizen around the world responds to what they are told: and the Left media, for its own reasons, says that opposing violent islamo-fascists is bad (they are idiots because they are ignorant of Islams intended aims). The people around the World are peeved because of the media spin, if they saw the full picture (or are in a country ruined by jihadis) then they vehemently disagree with your leftist point-of-view.

It is clear you don't know very much about the history of Islam or the contemporary situation at all. Hence you defend the indefensible.